Fare meters adapted to register a plurality of charges which contribute to the total calculated fare have been of great value to taxi operators and others for automatically calculating such fare. U.S. Pat. No. 3,983,378 discloses a fare measurer including means for counting electrical impulses proportional to either the speed of the vehicle or the time during which the vehicle remains motionless, i.e. waiting time. The pulses indicative of distance travelled or waiting time are transmitted to a binary multiplier wherein the taxi operator selects a multiplication factor by means of several banks of binary switches to determine the fare in accordance with lawful tariffs in the locality. Additional binary switches are provided to enable the fare measurer to register secondary charges such as the number of passengers, baggage handled, elapsed waiting time or special fare rates depending upon, for example, location or time of day. The fare is then automatically calculated and the total fare displayed to the operator by a digital display.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,843,874 shows a taxi meter having pushbuttons for registering the costs of additional services and charges such as the handling of trunks or the paying of bridge and tunnel tolls. Each pressing of a pushbutton increments a fare display be a preselected amount. The patent suggests that where each pressing of the button registers a further charge of ten cents, a 50 cent bridge toll would require five such depressions to provide a visual record of the additional amount to be collected from the passenger at the conclusion of the trip.
The fare measurer of U.S. Pat. No. 3,843,874 further suggests the use of pushbuttons to enable selection of one of four particular tariff schedules, one of which might depend upon the number of zones through which the taxi passes. Nevertheless, the patent discloses the determination of the fare based on the number of impulses counted from a pulse generator operating in response to the distance travelled; the pushbuttons merely select the desired one of a plurality of frequency divider outputs. The operator adds the fare calculated from the selected tariff schedule to the additional services cost to arrive at a total fare charged to the customer.
These types of electronic faremeters automatically perform the calculation of the fare in response to the charges entered therein by the operator and then merely display numerical representations of the fare derived from the charges. Such units display only information relating to cumulative totals such as the total fare or subtotals of the fare resulting from, for example, the distance travelled or the number of bags and trunks carried during the hired travel. Thus, the passenger is often unable to ascertain which and how many charges were added to arrive at the total fare. Indeed, in some situations, not even the total fare is in view of the passenger and thus the passenger is not made aware of it until the destination is reached.
Prior art taximeters are further seen to lack particular adaptation to fare calculation for hired travel within a zone tariff schedule locality wherein the fare meter receives data indicative of a zone containing the origin of the travel and a zone containing the destination of the travel. To be completely effective such a zone-adapted fare meter must also be quickly and simply adaptable to calculate fares based on alternative tariff schedules.